A charmed life ends in a horrid death

Army pilot killed self after returning from war.

Rebecca Morrison sits with dog Daisy at home in Grand Prairie. Morrison’s husband, Capt. Ian Morrison, a helicopter pilot who was an Iraq war veteran, committed suicide last March while posted to Fort Hood.

Rebecca and Ian Morrison with the horse he bought after thinking of his wife’s love of the animals. “He was really quiet except when he was around me,” Rebecca said of her husband.

Photo By Harry Thomas, San Antonio Express-News

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Ian and Rebecca Morrison at an Army social event.

Ian and Rebecca Morrison on wedding day

Photo By Jerry Lara/San Antonio Express-News

Rebecca Morrison at her house in Grand Prairie, Texas, Saturday, Dec. 16, 2012. Morrison's husband, Capt. Ian Morrison, committed suicide back last March while stationed at Fort Hood. He was an AH-64D Apache helicopter pilot.

In a snapshot, she leans into the attack helicopter pilot, smiling broadly, her eyes closed as he kisses her. One word, written on the binder next to the picture, captures the mood: “Forever.”

Perhaps it was blind optimism, but Capt. Ian Morrison and his young wife, Rebecca, had reason to bet against the specter of death and disillusionment that has shadowed many American troops and their families after a decade of war.

A West Point graduate some friends jokingly called “Capt. Brad Pitt” because of his Hollywood A-list looks, Morrison flew AH-64D Apache Longbow gunships in Iraq.

Back home near his post at Fort Hood, his wife was the attractive girl next door working on a master's degree.

His yearlong tour in Iraq was smooth, but Ian began to lose control after his return a year ago.

He slept poorly, was anxious and, as time passed, aware of feeling depressed. While not uncommon issues for troops back from war, he mostly appeared to cope as GIs often do.

Then one evening last March, everything unraveled.

Sitting in the bedroom of his home in Copperas Cove just west of the post, Ian Morrison put a .38-caliber handgun to his throat. There was no note and no explanation, no alcohol or drugs in his blood.

He died instantly.

At 26, he was one of two Iraq veterans living in Copperas Cove to commit suicide during a 48-hour period that week.

“He was a highly successful, accomplished Apache pilot, and certainly not someone that you would think would be in the category of people who would commit an act like that,” said Copperas Cove Justice of the Peace John Guinn, who pronounced Morrison dead at the scene. “There were some stressors in his life, stressors that obviously we don't understand.”

Overall, 2012 will mark a new, bleak record for Army suicides, exceeding the 305 deaths recorded two years ago. And the toll throughout the rest of the military is grim.

Final tallies from the Army, Air Force and Marines aren't complete, but 492 active-duty, reserve and guard troops are thought to have taken their lives last year, one every 18 hours.

Years after trying to turn things around, the Army's rate of 28 suicides per 100,000 soldiers is far above the national civilian average of 12 per 100,000 people and higher than any other service branch.

The services have lost more troops to suicide over the past 10 years — 3,429 — than the United States and its allies have lost in combat in Afghanistan.

In the Army, 129 of 177 active-duty suicide victims last year were veterans of between one and six or more deployments. Just more than half of victims from the reserves deployed between one and four times.

When asked whether anyone can yet explain why so many troops are committing suicide, the Army's Bruce Shahbaz took a deep breath.

“It is a very complex combination of factors to include deployment experience, to include behavioral health conditions, to include other stresses such as relationship problems, substance abuse problems, financial problems, all of which combine in a unique way in every individual when we do the examination of cases,” he said.

'All-American boy'

Ian Morrison served in the last year of the Iraq war, never firing his Apache weapons in combat, and was among the last U.S. troops to return home just before Christmas 2011.

Quiet and introverted, Ian was artistic and academically gifted. Perhaps destined for military life, he was born at Camp Lejeune, N.C., eight years after his father, Gregory Morrison, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy.

“He was the all-American boy. He was exactly what he appears to be in the pictures — he was tall and thin and muscular and very handsome,” said his father, a retired Marine Corps major living in Hockessin, Del. “He did do well in school. He was co-captain of the swim team at a time the swim team was doing very well.”

Ian got the nickname “Nugent,” a piglet in James Herriot's “All Creatures Great and Small” novels, because as a baby he was pink with no hair and had a big appetite. His artistic side showed early on when he sang — well before he could write or speak well.

In photos, he often makes faces.

“He was really quiet except when he was around me,” his wife said. “He didn't draw attention to himself, but he was hilarious. He would make you pee in your pants, he was so funny.”

His West Point roommate, Capt. Samuel Ketcham, said he looked up to Ian, who appeared to be strong, confident and never selfish. But looking back, he wonders whether one other trait wasn't a harbinger.

“The fact that he didn't talk a lot, I think, points more to maybe what caused it,” said Ketcham, 29, Fort Benning, Ga. “He just kind of isolated himself. I can see that happening. Ian not only was confident in himself, he also just didn't talk a lot.”

Ian was deeply spiritual and frequently read the Bible. He adopted an abused, abandoned dog and gave $500 a month to a charity that supported four children in his name, and he wrote them letters.

Ian and Rebecca met on a Christian online dating site while he was at West Point and she studied at Stephen F. Austin State University, talking daily before they met three months later. In love from the first conversation, he proposed on West Point's “Flirtation Walk,” the only place at the

academy where outward displays of flirtation are allowed.

After graduation, Ian trained at Fort Rucker, Ala., to be a pilot.

By all accounts, he was a quick study and appeared unflappable while juggling a new marriage and the Army's intense novice pilot course. He and Rebecca sat at a table as he went through emergency flight procedures, a ritual for many student pilots and their spouses. When the books were closed, he thought about Rebecca's love of horses and bought her one.

“Ian was steady, if anything. He never made rash decisions,” said Rebecca, 25. “He was logical. I am sure I could be infuriating, but he'd never raise his voice.”

They were excited when orders came to go to Fort Hood. There, they found a one-story house in Copperas Cove and she began work on a master's degree while he deployed to Iraq. The deployment came and went, and then he was home. But as Christmas and a new year arrived so, too, did the realization that things weren't right.

Sleepless nights

Ian was consumed by worries that didn't seem normal, like passing a physical training test he had aced in the past. He complained that his heart was constantly racing.

“'I can't sleep at all,'” Rebecca recalled him telling her. “'I think I need to see a psychiatrist.'”

A Fort Hood investigation into Ian's death stated that he suffered from stress that included lack of sleep, an upcoming move back to Fort Rucker, selling his home, dissatisfaction with his assignment on the post, and a “strained relationship between his wife and his parents.”

Both sides of the family confirm that but say little else. Rebecca accuses the post's medical network of failing him, but what Fort Hood did or failed to do is a matter of dispute. The post's investigation said Ian's commanders knew nothing about anxiety issues that could have contributed to his suicide.

The report, though, said a company commander was aware he was having trouble sleeping and that he was grounded temporarily after being given Ambien, which Rebecca and her father-in-law fear contributed to his death.

“Capt. Morrison did not threaten suicide at any time to anyone; each time Capt. Morrison had contact with medical personnel he was asked if he was suicidal, and each time he responded, 'No,'” the report stated.

Over the last three weeks of his life, however, Ian made a series of increasingly frantic efforts to get help, initially seeing a counselor in early March. A week later, he had trouble sleeping and felt exhausted.

A few days after that, he saw a nurse, telling her that he was anxious and couldn't sleep. A little over two hours later, he went to the Troop Medical Health Clinic but was told he couldn't be treated there because aviators have to see flight surgeons. That afternoon, he expressed concerns over not sleeping, anxiety at home and moving to Fort Rucker. The surgeon issued a prescription, but the report didn't say what it was.

The next day, he made an appointment for April 12, but canceled it during the call, saying the date was too far away and that he'd see his flight surgeon. That night, he took an Ambien and, groggy, laid down. Rebecca said she scratched his head until he fell asleep.

On March 21, the last day of his life, Ian did yoga at 6:30 a.m. He returned to the Troop Medical Health Clinic, saying he was taking his medication but still couldn't sleep. Rebecca said he faced a two-hour wait.

For the first time, he told officials there he was depressed but not thinking about suicide. A flight surgeon told him of options for care that included the emergency room.

At 4 p.m., he sent a text while on the phone, trying to make an appointment. “STILL ON HOLD,” Ian told his wife.

The Army said he did flight simulator training that afternoon, and talked and joked with his instructor for 35 minutes after the session ended. At 7:15 p.m., he shook hands with the instructor and left for home.

Rebecca came back from class later to find him on a pillow, dead. The fact that he didn't leave a note and appeared to have taken an Ambien leads her to think he unconsciously took his life.

“I don't believe he knew what he was doing,” she said.

Rebecca tries to cope

In the months that have passed since Ian's suicide, Rebecca often has considered killing herself. She attributes that partly to Ambien, which she took for a while and still thinks played a role in her husband's death — despite the coroner's report that found no drugs in his system.

But part of the problem is the way he died, and what she saw in their bedroom.

“I still have those thoughts. When it happened, it was so present and all I wanted to do was be with Ian, that's all I wanted to do and I was willing to get there any way I could,” she said.

But Ian's death also gave her a cause, and that led to a major speaking engagement at a Washington suicide conference last summer, a Time magazine cover story and counseling. Therapy has helped her cope with seeing the color red, which reminds her of her bloodied bedroom.

Now in the Dallas area, where she teaches, Rebecca is slowly building a new life. There is therapy twice a week, horse riding and flying lessons.

Some days she gets out. Other days, overwhelmed, she stays home, but over time she has gained a sense of renewed resilience. And she credits her therapy for her improvement.

“That therapy is like bitch-crazy,” Rebecca said. “It is ridiculous and painful and evokes crazy-wild dreams, and you really have to watch yourself and stay in check because you're dealing with something that has been repressed and the only way to get through it is to bring it up, but it is very painful. And a lot of people don't do it because it is so painful and a lot of people are afraid to conquer, to attack these fears.”

But it's worth it, she said.

“It's worth the pain of it because like I said, I'm better today than I was in May because I've been working, I have not been pushing it away,” she said. “Therapy is work. Some day, I told (my therapist), at the end, whenever the end is, I'm going to get her to give me the total of how much I've spent. I'm going to say that's what my sanity cost.”